Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

Australia to probe Web giants' impact on news, ads, competition

Google, Facebook, named as worthy of inquiry

Australia's government has fulfilled a promise to probe Web giants' impact on the media, news and advertising businesses.

The land down under recently re-wrote its laws on media ownership, to allow greater concentration of ownership. That law was contentious, given that a certain R Murdoch already dominates Australian media. To gain the votes needed to get the law through the Parliament, the government therefore pledged an inquiry into how the media landscape has changed given that advertising spend on digital platforms has gone from zero per cent of the market to forty per cent in under two decades.

Treasurer Scott Morrison MP has now ordered Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to run the promised inquiry.

The Terms of Reference [PDF] require the ACCC to consider “ the impact of digital platforms on the supply of news and journalistic content and the implications of this for media content creators, advertisers and consumers” among other matters.

With Facebook and Google winning the lion's share of that spend, they've been named as especially deserving of an investigation into their influence, but the investigation will consider all “digital search engines, social media platforms and other digital content aggregation platforms”.

The ACCC's been given a year to produce a draft report, with a final effort due “by early June 2019.”

That's a long time in the real world, never mind the fast-moving world of online media. It's also a timeframe that will see the final report delivered after Australia's next election. On current trends that means the probe's recommendations will land in the hands of an incoming Labor Party government of rather more progressive political hue than Australia's current elected rulers. ®

 

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like